This post first appeared on Media Musings on the 17th of Feb. sheer laziness (or is it inertia) that prevented me from posting it here!

For the last few months we have been working closely with Sahara One to develop a show that will disrupt the viewing pattern of competition. The culmination of this was a daily live interactive quiz show that went on air on Monday 14th of February 2005.

The show named – Dial One aur Jeeto (dial One and Win) – is hosted by Mandira Bedi and Aman Verma. And it has been one of the best kept secrets in the industry. When the promos hit on the 12th – the call centre received 12000 calls in the span of 4 hours.

When the show went on air on monday – with 350,000 callers who hit the call centre.

On tuesday this figure went up to over a million calls.

Early figures show a day by day doubling of viewership.

And calls are pouring in from everywhere – across the country – even Chennai which does not traditionally view Hindi Channels. I guess that Sahara One benefits from being a Free to Air channel in this market.

Mandira is great. Aman is fantastic. The show is good. And the interactivity is incredible.

I believe that this is the begining of a new trend in programming. Until it becomes stale. Then all of us will wait and think about the next BIG idea!